Lightning Warrior Raidy (PC) review

"But if you're expecting an amazing, old-school crawler experience like Wizardry or the more recent Etrian Odyssey like I was, well... This isn't it. Lightning Warrior Raidy is littered with a ton of flaws that make it a hard recommendation for all but the most desperate of dungeon crawler fans."

In a remote village nestled deep in the woods, trouble is a'brewin'. The maidens of said hamlet, as maidens are wont to do, have been nefariously kidnapped and thus it's up to the awesomely powerful and equally maidenesque warrior Raidy to enter their kidnappers' lair-- a conveniently nearby tower-- and kick some first-person dungeon-crawling RPG ass to save the day.

But if you're expecting an amazing, old-school crawler experience like Wizardry or the more recent Etrian Odyssey like I was, well... This isn't it. Lightning Warrior Raidy is littered with a ton of flaws that make it a hard recommendation for all but the most desperate of dungeon crawler fans.

Take the locale you're set to explore for starters. While many RPGs have the common courtesy to change up the scenery a little, Lightning Warrior Raidy expects you to be pleased with the barren gray stone walls of the single tower you explore for your entire short-lived adventure. Adding insult to injury, you'll see no landmarks whatsoever with the exception of a door or two... Some of which don't even open when you get to higher floors. Instead, when you randomly stumble upon something, like, say, a treasure chest, a small cutscene of said chest will appear on the screen, then disappear as soon as you've collected your reward. Cutscenes also possess this "feature" so that every floor of the tower ends up becoming a repetitive "find items, find cutscene, find boss, kill boss" routine that grows old fairly quickly.

Speaking of which, the battles offer little to no interaction. You'll only ever fight one monster at any given time, and you're stuck with the traditional "fight, item, magic, run" setup that was growing stale by 1990. With only about three (admittedly well-drawn) monsters per floor (of a six floor dungeon) and massive strength spikes between floors, you'll often find yourself needing to grind levels before attempting to take on the next story. It's a jarring experience that breaks the flow of the game and makes it even more monotonous, as if the developers knew that otherwise you'd only spend about 15 minutes on each floor, so they had to pad it out with an additional 45 minutes of grinding per story. Furthermore, the only "magic" Raidy even has is her Thunder Slash, which is little more than a guaranteed critical hit that consumes MP. It dumbs the battles down to requiring no strategy whatsoever, since the player has more incentive to simply conserve MP until that floor's boss fight, then spam Thunder Slash until the boss collapses in a big naked pile.

Oh right, I almost forgot. This is a hentai RPG, after all, so defeating one of your all-female cast of foes such as a Minotaur (girl dressed in cow suit wielding a halberd) or a wererat (loli girl dressed as a rat) rewards you with a view of them stripped down, clothes tattered and body parts revealed. Defeating the bosses rewards you with a detailed cutscene of Raidy giving the boss a taste of her own medicine, but there's one small problem: there's not enough images. With only three or four images per "cutscene," it makes getting excited at the unfurling action more than a little difficult. On the bright side, getting slain by the floor's boss results in a cutscene where Raidy is tortured in much the same manner as Raidy herself tortures the boss should she win, so you're rewarded whether you win or lose... Until you're forced to restart from your last save after seeing an all-caps message:

------GAME OVER------

There's little to recommend about Lightning Warrior Raidy. RPG fans will find fault in the poorly-developed battle system, lack of scenery and repetitive gameplay, while hentai fans will be wanting more from the cutscenes, which they've seen drawn better in other games. In a cruel twist of irony, Lightning Warrior Raidy attempted to appeal to fans of both genres, but in the end pushed both sides away.

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Should you have the patience to overcome these initial hardships, you'll find that Final Fantasy XIV has the potential to be a very enjoyable game, despite how detractors simply say it's a Final Fantasy XI clone with shinier graphics. There are, of course, some similarities. The locales are different, but...

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Lewis posted November 07, 2008:

Weird sense of dťja vu, odd website quirk, or other?

'Cause I definitely reckon I've read this review before.

espiga posted November 07, 2008:

I had it posted in the freelance forums for the longest time, but Venter never approved my final draft...Also for the longest time.

We both seemed to have forgotten about it until Venter reminded me about it in my, uh.. Bloggy Blog.

Lewis posted November 07, 2008:

That'll be it.

Felix_Arabia posted November 07, 2008:

Espiga, are you really married, or did you just drink too much Sapporo when you made that blog post?

espiga posted November 07, 2008:

Yeah, I'm hitched now.

And it's sake, not saki.

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